Two labels, a studio, one program

For most of its life the corner is remembered for what played in it. In its last years the room also made things of its own, and this deep dive follows three of them, from the surest to the least sure.

Two labels

WORM ran two record labels from the building. By January 2002 the electronic label Z6 had issued three CDs, and its sublabel ZZZZZZ two releases by what Ravage called “innovative rock groups”¹. The same article described the record shop at the front as een etalage voor de labels, “a shop window for the labels” WORM had set up².

One name on Z6 closes a loop. Huib Emmer had played the venue's canonised opening night on 13 February 1994³, and eight years later he was back on the room's own label with Radion⁴. The labels' output is a separate list from the records made in the room.

A studio

According to WORM's later account, Lukas Simonis and Henk Bakker, also known as Doctors Klangendum, founded the studio in the building in 2001⁵. Other sources suggest it may still have been taking shape into 2002. Simonis described an older plan for a music workshop, developed with Gerard van Dongen during the Centrum voor Actuele Muziek process of the mid-1990s. Dodorama probably became WORM out of that process⁶. Simonis connects the studio to the labels. He was the programmer who chose the concerts⁷, a musician on one of the labels⁸, and, by WORM's later account, a founder of the studio⁹.

One program

The third thing began at a desk. Mike van Gaasbeek, the venue's administrator, said he used speech-recognition software in the office and grew tired of entering the same event details again and again. Out of that came Stager, an event-management web tool, most likely first devised in the office at the corner¹⁰.

What is certain, and what is not

The three rest on different levels of proof, and this account keeps them apart. The labels are documented: by January 2002 Z6 had three CDs out¹¹.

The studio's date is where the sources diverge. WORM's own page puts the founding in 2001¹².

Stager has the least certain history of the three. That the tool was thought up in this office is probable rather than certain, and it rests on van Gaasbeek's own account¹⁴. Labels, studio and software all belong to a room whose agenda billed the Eddie Prévost Project on 8 March 2003 as the last concert at Rochussenstraat 169¹⁵. A surviving WORM poster, a different kind of source from the agenda, announces a programme at the address in November 2002¹⁶. WORM's later life elsewhere lies outside this account: whatever the organisation built after it left the building is another story, and this deep dive does not read it back into no. 169.